Conservatives in support of repealing the “estate tax” have steamrolled opposition by referring to the levy on the superrich (e.g., top one percent of U.S. households) as the “death tax.”
During Capitol Hill testimony on Nov. 14, Buffett showed that two can play the game of semantics. He called the estate tax a “death present,” and something that is vital to “prevent our democracy from becoming a dynastic plutocracy.” Bully for Buffett!He told Congress that tax law changes benefit people like himself while the “average American went exactly nowhere on the economic scale: he’s been on a treadmill while the superrich have been on a spaceship.” It's hard to put the "class warfare" tag on Buffett.
One wonders if Buffett has read Thom Hartmann’s book “Cracking the Code.” The Air America host contends that conservatives have battered liberals in the policy arena because they are masters of “political communication.”
For instance, the word "surge" vs. "escalation" was used to describe the policy of flooding Baghad with more troops. One never hears the word “occupation” coming from the White House. U.S. soldiers in Iraq aren't "occupiers," instead they are nobly enrolled in the “war on terror.”
Hartmann contends that Democrats should have taken President Bush at his word when he declared “Mission Accomplished” from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Had Democrats followed that aircraft carrier photo-op with talk about the “occupation” of Iraq, the vast bulk of U.S. troops would be home by now. Even Bush once conceded that “nobody likes to be occupied.”
Environmentalists also have an opportunity to reframe the debate about global warming. The word “warming” has a cozy feel to it. “How about “global heating?”